Anchor Babies

Today is Thursday, August 27, 2015.  Kept our son home from school today, and he is playing with our daughter while I type these words.

I've written for the Dayton City Paper on and off for several years, and before that I wrote for the paper in it's earlier incarnations -- as the Impact Weekly, and before that, the Dayton Voice.

When my wife Elizabeth (girlfriend at the time) and I moved to Dayton in August of 1995, I sought out the offices of the Dayton Voice and presented them with some writing samples. The paper's editor Marianne McMullen, and publisher, her husband Jeff Epton, both liked my writing and they put me to work reviewing books, writing features, and judging and helping to organize the Voice's annual short story and poetry competition, which I remember attracting over 100 short stories and 700 poems one year. My columns and articles garnered several letters from New York magazine's John Simon, and also a phone call from Harlan Ellison thanking me for a review and dispensing some advice on being (and staying) a writer. 

I always enjoyed writing for the paper, and I learned a lot.

At this point in my life, I write for Sarah Sidlow, editor, and Paul Noah, publisher and owner of the Dayton City Paper. I very much enjoy still being associated with the paper, which is the local arts and entertainment weekly for the area. I feel it's a quality publication, and that the staff and writers strive to deliver an interesting product week in and week out. It isn't perfect, and I'm sure we have our share of local detractors, but I defend it and I'm proud to be a part of it.

Each week our newspaper features a section called Debate Forum, in which a newsworthy topic is introduced, and then written about by two writers, one taking a liberal slant on the topic, the other a more conservative viewpoint. I was asked recently to act as "moderator" of the section each week, helping to select the topic and writing the introductory material before handing it over to the two writers who will face off and argue their sides. This week presented my first opportunity to introduce the topic for the next Debate Forum, which is on the subject of "anchor babies" -- currently in the news due to the presidential campaigns.

I present that short (650 words), unedited piece to you here for your amusement.

DEBATE FORUM: THE ANCHOR BABIES QUESTION
Are U.S. Babies Born to Illegal Aliens Really Americans?
by
Tim Walker


What makes you an American citizen?
The Constitution, for one thing. If you were born in this country then
you are automatically, by definition, a citizen of the United States,
with all the rights and privileges that status entails – regardless of
your race, sex, religion, or ethnic background, and regardless of
whether or not anyone else in your family is a citizen.
Immigration, illegal and otherwise, promises to be a hot-button issue
during the upcoming Presidential campaigns. Which means, if you've
been following the news, that the term “anchor babies” is coming up
more and more often. Tossed around by Donald Trump, drawing criticism
of Jeb Bush like a lightning rod, the term has become a sound bite, a
meme in the political climate.
What exactly is an anchor baby? In the current political parlance, an 
anchor baby – an often derogatory term which many are equating with an
ethnic slur –  is a child born in this country to parents who are not
U.S. citizens, possibly with the hopes that the child may some day
make it easier for the parents to become citizens themselves.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified 147 years ago
by a Congress who were desperately trying to define exactly what an
American was. In their desire to undo the damage years of slavery had
done to this country, damage which the five bloody years of the Civil
War had just recently brought to an end, Congress amended the
Constitution to say this, in part: “All persons born or naturalized in
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No
state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process
of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.”
Which means, those of you who are running for office, that short of a
major change to the U.S. Constitution – a difficult process which
involves a two-thirds majority vote in congress and ratification by
three-quarters of the states – then children of illegal immigrants, so
called anchor babies, are going to remain citizens of the United
States.
Which means, Arizona, that you cannot suddenly define as an “illegal
alien” any child born within the borders of your state to parents who
are themselves illegal aliens.
Do anchor babies have the right to be citizens? Is it fair for us, as
a nation, to embrace the children of people who never should have been
here in the first place, and make them citizens of this great nation,
when this nation so obviously already has trouble taking care of its
own? Won't that just encourage illegal ready-to-deliver parents to
desperately find some way to get across the border, then look for the
nearest hospital? Isn't this whole concept economic suicide?
Or do we continue on the path that made this nation the world's
shining example of freedom that we are? Do we continue to honor those
words at the base of the Statue of Liberty, “give me your tired, your
poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”? Can we really
justify changing the Constitution to exclude so many children born
here within our borders? What then – do we adopt the Nazi policy of
saying that the estimated four million anchor babies already residing
in this country are, retroactively, never citizens in the first place?
Anchor babies – free U.S. Citizens at birth? Or nothing but newborn
burdens on taxpayers? 

reading: Thomas Harris's HANNIBAL (the "Florence" chapters)
listening: the Jackie Brown soundtrack
watching: old NOVA episodes